Subtle Quotes - Page 34

I see the President almost every day. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face with its deep-cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.

Walt Whitman

War, Sadness, Eye

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The principle of self-reliance grows out of a fundamental doctrine of the Church, that of agency. Just as each individual is accountable for his choices and actions in spiritual matters, so also is he accountable in temporal matters. It is through our own efforts and decisions that we earn our way in this life. While the Lord will magnify us in both subtle and dramatic ways, he can only guide our footsteps when we move our feet. Ultimately, our own actions determine our blessings or lack of them. It is a direct consequence of both agency and accountability.

Marion G. Romney

Spiritual, Moving, Blessing

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Perfume opens endless horizons. It appeals both to the senses and to the imagination. Like an enchantment, it works on an instinctive level and at the same time is extremely subtle.

Nino Cerruti

Imagination, Horizon, Levels

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Devotion is the essence of the path, and if we have in mind nothing but the guru and feel nothing but fervent devotion, whatever occurs is perceived as his blessing. If we simply practice with this constantly present devotion, this is prayer itself. When all thoughts are imbued with devotion to the guru, there is a natural confidence that this will take care of whatever may happen. All forms are the guru, all sounds are prayer, and all gross and subtle thoughts arise as devotion. Everything is spontaneously liberated in the absolute nature, like knots untied in the sky.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Prayer, Blessing, Essence

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Users of clichés frequently have more sinister intentions beyond laziness and conventional thinking. Relabelling events often entails subtle changes of meaning. War produces many euphemisms, downplaying or giving verbal respectability to savagery and slaughter.

Patrick Cockburn

War, Thinking, Giving

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TV, and the culture it anchors, masks and drowns out the subtle and vital information contact with the real world once provided. There are lessons, enormous lessons, lessons that may be crucial to the planet's persistence as a green and diverse place and also to the happiness of it's inhabitants-that nature teaches and TV can't.

Bill McKibben

Real, Persistence, Anchors

Bill McKibben (2014). “The Age of Missing Information”, p.26, Random House

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Everything I do is inspired by my early life”, Bourgeois’ looked up to her mother who was the most important person in her life for many reasons, ‘Maman’ symbolizes her mother; “The friend, because my best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and as useful as a spider.

Louise Bourgeois

Mother, Clever, Important

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Tao is beyond words and beyond understanding. Words may be used to speak of it, but they cannot contain it. Tao existed before words and names, before heaven and earth, before the ten thousand things. It is the unlimited father and mother of all limited things. Therefore, to see beyond boundaries to the subtle heart of things, dispense with names, with concepts, with expectations and ambitions and differences. Tao and its many manifestations arise from the same source: subtle wonder within mysterious darkness. This is the beginning of all understanding.

Laozi

Mother, Father, Heart

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Bardot, Byron, Hitler, Hemingway, Monroe, Sade: we do not require our heroes to be subtle, just to be big. Then we can depend on someone to make them subtle.

D. J. Enright

Hero, Byron, Bigs

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As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.

Jane Jacobs

Cities, Urban Renewal, Years

Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.13, Vintage

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To visit Morocco is still like turning the pages of some illuminated Persian manuscript all embroidered with bright shapes and subtle lines.

Edith Wharton

Morocco, Shapes, Lines

Edith Wharton (2004). “In Morocco”, p.16, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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There are sacred moments in life when we experience in rational and very direct ways that separation, the boundary between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and Nature, is illusion. Oneness is reality. We can experience that stasis is illusory and that reality is continual flux and change on very subtle and also on gross levels of perception . . . When people bother you in any way, it is because their souls are trying to get your divine attention and your blessing.

Catherine Ponder

Blessing, Reality, Oneness

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The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.

Carl Jung

Dream, Psychics, Balance

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The best ideas aren't hidden in shadowy recesses. They're right in front of us, hidden in plain sight. Innovation seldom depends on discovering obscure or subtle elements but in seeing the obvious with fresh eyes. This is easier said than done because nothing is as hard to see as what's right before our eyes. We overlook what we take for granted. Billions of tea drinkers observed the force of steam escaping from water boiling in a kettle before James Watt realized that this vapor could be converted into energy.

Richard Farson

Leadership, Eye, Ideas

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The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right.

George Orwell

Party, Heart, Eye

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.178, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality. Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it - it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody's being. Watch, explore. Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you.

Rajneesh

Sex, Trying, Watches

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I reached in experience the nirvana which is unborn, unrivalled, secure from attachment, undecaying and unstained. This condition is indeed reached by me which is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, tranquil, excellent, beyond the reach of mere logic, subtle, and to be realized only by the wise.

Gautama Buddha

Wise, Buddhist, Inspiration

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Sin does not leap upon us fully armed. It steals in through a look, a swift, silent suggestion or imagination, but love and loyalty to Jesus will make you watchful and swift to rise up and cast out the subtle enemy. Do this and you shall live, and live victoriously.

Samuel Logan Brengle

Love, Christian, Loyalty

Samuel Logan Brengle (1929). “Ancient Prophets: With a Series of Occasional Papers on Modern Problems”

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Let our hearts admit, “I am poor and weak. Satan is too subtle, too cunning, too powerful; he watches constantly for advantages over my soul. The world presses in upon me with all sorts of pressures, pleas, and pretences. My own corruption is violent, tumultuous, enticing, and entangling. As it conceives sin, it wars within me and against me. Occasions and opportunities for temptation are innumerable. No wonder I do not know how deeply involved I have been with sin. Therefore, on God alone will I rely for my keeping. I will continually look to Him.

John Owen

Powerful, War, Heart

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There are subtle ways and overt ways of alienating a child from a parent, but either way it's evil

Dennis Prager

Children, Evil, Parent

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Actually, however, life begins less by reaching upward, than by turning upon itself. But what a marvelously insidious, subtle image of life a coiling vital principle would be! And how many dreams the leftward oriented shell, or one that did not conform to the rotation of its species, would inspire!

Gaston Bachelard

Dream, Inspire, Principles

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Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.

William O. Douglas

Book, Home, Government

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No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.

Steven Brust

Knives, Style, Wizards

Steven Brust (2003). “The Book of Athyra”, p.134, Penguin

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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment - from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies - how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?

Alan Watts

Motivational, Eye, Jewels

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The works of 'abstract' art are subtle creations of order out of simple contrasting elements.

Jan Tschichold

Art, Simple, Order

Jan Tschichold (1967). “Asymmetric Typography”, New York : Reinhold Publishing Corporation

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